Though familiar to continental audiences from 1924 onwards, Strauss's bittersweet portrait of a period of strain in his own marriage had to wait until the 1974 Glyndebourne festival for its UK premiere. At the insistence of the great Elisabeth Söderström, who played Christine, the opera was given in English rather than the original German, and this BBC broadcast from the opening run forms the latest instalment in Chandos's Opera in English Archive Series. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Söderström herself is often devastating as the musician's wife whose volatile temper masks a lonely vulnerability. There's also a fine performance from Alexander Oliver as Lummer, the aristocratic extortionist who gradually homes in on her. But Marco Bakker is a timorous-sounding Storch, while John Pritchard's conducting bolsters the view, prevalent at the time though now widely disputed, that the piece itself is essentially brittle and unsubtle. The rather thin string sound betrays the recording's age and there's more stage clatter than is ideally comfortable in the tobogganing and ball scenes. It's not as good as Joseph Keilberth's recording, also live, on Orfeo.